Why does this keep happening to me?
Q&A: Is there such a thing as collective karma? Part IV
Note: These next few articles will be devoted to answering questions asked by readers. If you have questions, please submit them by clicking the button below.Is there such a thing as group karma or collective karma, not just the individual?
For example, the karma of a nation?
As an example, in the 1920s we went through the Great Depression. People said it felt like "getting the rug swept up under them."
Right after, the US experienced a polio wave, and the president that got us out of the Depression was FDR, who had...polio.
I feel this for a lot that is going on in the world right now…
Om Sri Gurubhyo Namah. Salutations to all the teachers.
Consider the people in your life. These people could be your family, your friends, your coworkers, people that you know through other communities that you are a part of, or a part of any other group.
Each individual brings out something in you, whether you like it or not. Sometimes these effects are easily noticeable, while other times they are too subtle to immediately see without careful attention.
As discussed last time, this phenomenon occurs due to the awakening of particular samskaaras, or impressions within your mind, in the presence of particular stimulus.
Let us consider, for example, a person who likes cookies. When this person sees a cookie, especially after not having had a cookie for some time, they are likely to feel a sense of desire for the cookie. By the same token, if they dislike a certain smell, the moment they are confronted with the smell, they are likely to feel some displeasure.
In this scenario, the feelings of pleasure and displeasure - sukha and dukkha - are not generated by the objects themselves, but are rather rooted in the samskaaras within the mind.
P: How do we know that it isn’t rooted in the object?
Jogi: If these feelings were rooted in the object, the same object could not evoke different mental happenings in different minds. However, we find that it is possible for some people to like Hawaiian pizza while others dislike it, or for some people to enjoy the taste of licorice while others find it repulsive.
If we stop for a moment to consider this, we will find that any talk of whether a restaurant is “good” or “bad”, if a movie is “good” or “bad”, if clothing choices, furniture, music, or any other objects are “good” or “bad”, is insufficient to determine whether or not the experience of these objects will be pleasant or unpleasant for another person.
All pleasant and unpleasant experiences stem from our own samskaaras, not from the objects themselves.
Any time someone says “that movie/music/restaurant/event/etc. was not good”, it is only a reflection of their own samskaaras, since these samskaaras were activated when they were faced with that particular set of stimuli, leading to an unpleasant experience for them.
Just as our samskaaras are activated when the sense stimuli in the mind - the pramaana-vrittis - are inanimate objects, the samskaaras are also activated when the pramaana-vrittis are people. The feelings of sukha and dukha are due to the activation of our own samskaaras - our own karma - whether or not the vrittis are in reference to a living or non-living thing.
This brings us to the idea of collective karma, in reference to how other people make us feel.
Let us consider an example to make this clear. Try to think of a person who is currently causing you some sort of anxiety, sadness, pain, or other unpleasant mental sensation. This could be a friend, a neutral person, or a difficult person. For the purposes of this exercise, pick a single person.
Consider what about the situation is causing you mental distress. Is it their happiness or pleasure? Is it their sadness or suffering? Did they get something that you wanted, or do something that you would have wanted to do? Did they act in a way that you didn’t like?
Most likely, the situation that is causing suffering, as it relates to the other person, falls into one of the following four categories:
Sukha: Their happiness is causing you suffering.
Dukkha: Their suffering if causing you suffering.
Punya: Their “good” deeds, or merits, are causing you suffering.
Apunya: Their “bad” deeds, or “bad” characteristics are causing you suffering.
For example, it may be that the other person is happy, and this is causing annoyance, jealousy, anger, or irritation in your mind. It may be that the other person is sad, and this is causing you to feel sad, angry, irritated, or disturbed. It may be that you don’t like how they talk to you, and this makes you feel frustrated.
For many of us, when we are in these situations, we tend to hone in on the person and their faults, as we perceive them. This pulls us outward (ie. vyutthaana), and distracts from the root of our suffering, which is in our own habit patterns that surface when faced with the other person as sense stimulus.
These habit patterns, or samskaaras, are our karma.
If we are honest with ourselves, and if we look closely enough, we will most likely find that the same patterns have cropped up in our lives at other points in time as well.
Let us imagine that you are suffering with jealousy because your coworker was promoted and you weren’t.
Here, the tendency may be to solve the surface-level issue, and thus dive into your work, trying to get promoted as well. Alternatively, your tendency may be to talk badly about the other person - to “vent” to others - about why you deserved it more than your coworker.
Any number of other possibilities also exist, such as the tendency to become sad or dejected, to ignore the situation, to act aggressively towards the person in the future, and so on. All of these are samskaaras that activated due to the sense stimulus of the coworker being promoted, in relation to your body-mind-identity.1
At this point, if you have lived long enough, you may look back on your life and notice that this has happened before. The specifics may be different, but the pattern is likely recognizable.
In this example, it may be that you were previously jealous of your friend for buying an amazing dress when you couldn’t afford it, or perhaps you were jealous of your some influencer on social media because they took an amazing trip to a place you have always wanted to go to.
P: So the commonality here is the tendency to jealousy?
Jogi: It may manifest in that way, but it is one level more abstract.
P: What do you mean?
In the example of jealousy here, the very same tendency can manifest in the form of any unpleasant mental sensation (ie. dukkha) in the face of punya - merit. For instance, other feelings such as inadequacy, sadness, dejection, anger, and so on may also arise. The commonality here is not the feeling of jealousy, but dukkha in the face of punya.
Just as this example used punya, the same thing can occur in the face of sukha, dukkha, and apunya, or even all of these.
This is why we sometimes get the feeling of “why does this keep happening to me.”
We may find that the same patterns show up over and over again in our lives, as though life is playing some sort of cruel joke on us. The same types of situations seem to appear repeatedly in different scenarios, with different people, causing us a variety of suffering.
For example, one person may feel as though they are regularly faced with situations where people are more successful than they are. This is an example of suffering in the face of punya.
Another person may feel as though they are regularly faced with situations where others are trying to control or dominate them. This is an example of suffering in the face of apunya.
A third person may feel as though they are repeatedly faced with situations where others are suffering and they have to console them, or take on their pain. This is an example of suffering in the face of dukkha.
A fourth person may feel as though they are repeatedly faced with situations where others are happier than they are. This is an example of suffering in the face of sukha.
Normally, we are unlikely to categorize it in this way. Rather, we are more likely to find the specifics of each scenario, and hone in on those to find the patterns. This is good, and can be useful to solve the root issue. However, it requires some reframing in order to be actionable.
To consider the example of the person who was passed up for a promotion, it is possible that this happened to them twice before, and so they may say “I am always getting passed up for promotions.”
However, in order to solve their suffering, a more helpful reframe may be that they often find themselves in situations where they suffer in the face of another person’s merit.
That is, “I tend to suffer in the face of others’ merit.”
First of all, this would likely expand the scope of things to include other situations which they may not have otherwise considered. For example, they may now include the time when they felt sad about their friend buying an expensive car, or when they felt angry that they didn’t win an award that they felt they deserved.
Second, they will be able to recognize these situations more frequently, with more clarity, in the future.
Finally, they can now use this reframing to know which Brahmavihaara they need to cultivate, so that the next time the situation occurs, it becomes an opportunity for them to practice.
In this particular situation, the relevant Brahmavihaara is muditaa, or gladness.
P: Wait a second, what does this have to do with collective karma?
Most often, this phenomenon appears in the form of challenges with people. When one “difficult” person leaves our lives, another one seems to appear to take their place. It can feel as though we somehow magically attract a certain type of person, who we know, from our own past experience, is bound to bring with them a particular kind of suffering.
However, this is neither magic2, and nor does it have to do with the person themselves. Rather, as we have seen, it has to do with your own samskaaras which activate in the presence of particular stimuli, which just so happen to involve the so-called “difficult” person.3
The reason it seems as though such people keep cropping up is not because of some cosmic serendipity, but rather because your samskaaras are always following you around, filtering your experience of the world.
The problem is not out there in the world, it’s in your own tendencies.
The good news is that there is a way out.
The cause of suffering is not in the external situations, but in our own samskaaras, which activate in response to those situations. Looking at external situations as the cause is like looking to sunlight rather than a seed as the cause of a plant.
If we can adjust our samskaaras to be such that they do not result in suffering, the situations can come and go, but we will not suffer.
However, given this, the painful situations - often appearing as “difficult people” - will continue to appear until we are able to resolve these samskaaras through practice.
P: How do we resolve these samskaaras?
The practice here is simple, and is known as the Four Attitudes, or the Brahmavihaaras, shown for quick reference in the table below:
More on this technique can be found in the articles here:
Once you get good at these, the patterns that you initially saw will slow down, and then cease altogether.
P: How is this possible?
Jogi: The patterns were not in the external world (ishvar-srishti), but in the mental layer of likes and dislikes through which you saw the world (jiva-srishti).
Don’t take this on faith. Yoga is all about experimentation and direct experience. Try it for yourself, and take notes to notice your own patterns over time.
Next time, we will continue the discussion on collective karma, going over where and how it can be applied, followed by an investigation into whether or not all karma is collective karma.
Until then, please submit your by questions by clicking the button below:
Notice, at the root, all of these stem from comparison, or division between “self” and “other”, also known as avidya. This manifests often in the form of a fixation with a narrative of one’s own life, wherein the individual is the main character, going through various trials and tribulations. Avidya is the root of all the kleshas, and is also at the root of karma. Getting rid of avidya is, of course, the Ultimate solution to all suffering.
any more than anything else is magic.
What’s more, just as other people are activating samskaaras in you, you are also activating particular samskaaras in them. In this way, all groups of people are a sort of web of interdependent samskaaras.